Can women's MMA continue to grow on the back of Ronda Rousey alone?

Fifty-four seconds. That’s how long it took Strikeforce 135-pound champ Ronda Rousey to submit Sarah Kaufman with the one move that Kaufman had to know was coming, the same one she had months to prepare for but still couldn’t stop.

Fifty-four seconds. You can’t microwave a Hot Pocket in that time. If you only took 54 seconds to brush your teeth, your mother would tell you to get back in there and do it again.

The fact that Rousey so easily dispatched a fighter who not so long ago stood atop the division reminds us that what’s really amazing is not just how she keeps catching opponents in the same submission, but how easy she makes it look. Maybe even too easy.

From Rousey’s perspective, the second round must seem like little more than a myth. She fights like she’s robbing a bank and somebody just hit the alarm. If not for introductions and post-fight interviews, she could get all her work done during the commercial breaks of a soap opera, and she’d hardly ever miss a plot point.

But since there’s almost no way to talk about female MMA without talking what is and isn’t “good” for the division as a whole, we might as well ask it: Is Rousey the messiah women’s MMA has been waiting for? Will the charisma and obvious talent of one fighter make the entire division more appealing to fans and maybe even the UFC? Or does her easy stroll through the biggest challenges her weight class has to offer just prove that, as UFC President Dana White has said, there’s a lack of depth among female fighters?

It’s a complicated question. On one hand, her fame alone has to help. The more people who see her on talk shows or on the cover of magazines, the more people who are likely to want to tune in on fight night and see what she’s all about. And the more people who see her fight, the greater the chance that some teenage girls out there might take up martial arts instead of other sports. Fellow Olympians in judo or wrestling or even boxing might see Rousey’s path to fame and fortune and decide to follow her into MMA once their amateur careers are over. A few years of that, and we’re bound to have more female fighters, which means better competition all around.

Then again, it’s hard to build a sport on the back of one athlete. It wasn’t so long ago that Gina Carano was the face of women’s MMA. After taking a beating from Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos, she discovered there were easier paychecks to be found in Hollywood, where the blood is fake. Now we only hear from her when she has a movie to promote. It makes you wonder whether Carano ever did as much for women’s MMA as it did for her.

But Rousey is different. Not only is she a far more dominant fighter than Carano, who was accused of benefitting from some generous matchmaking at times, she also seems less capable and/or interested in doing anything else for a living. From video game cameos to “American Gladiators” reboots, Carano demonstrated an eager willingness to monetize her fight fame in any way possible. Rousey still seems, shall we say, a little less polished. While Carano was the type who might only talk about fighting someone in the parking lot if she read it in a script first, when Rousey mentions the possibility of some extracurricular fisticuffs you get the sense that she’s done this before.

That all adds up to one very marketable fighter, and you can understand why White is so impressed with her. Then again, if the only female fighter who could conceivably fight in the UFC is Rousey (and even then, only in a purely hypothetical future, according to White), that’s not exactly encouraging for anyone who doesn’t happen to be her opponent in that bout. At that point, you’re not promoting female MMA – you’re promoting one female MMA fighter. Pretending otherwise would be like saying that just because Bob Dylan still plays to packed crowds, folk music is as popular as ever.

There are still fights out there for Rousey. There’s Santos, assuming she and Rousey can agree on a weight. There’s the still-unbeaten Sara McMann, who has an Olympic medal of her own to match against Rousey’s. If either of them fights Rousey, it’s headline news. If they fight absolutely anyone else, it’s not.

Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker says we should stop worrying about the future of women’s MMA, because clearly it’s here to stay. I wonder how much comfort that is to the female fighters who still struggle to find enough fights, let alone hefty enough paychecks, to allow them to devote themselves to this full-time. Women’s MMA might be here to stay in the sense that it won’t completely disappear any time soon, but surviving isn’t the same as thriving.

Rousey’s success could change that. She’s become an almost instant superstar, even if the speed with which she’s risen through the ranks makes some people wonder about the quality of those ranks to begin with. As of now, we still don’t know how good she is. She’s like a sports car with no straightaways to stretch out on. You know it’s fast, but you have no way of finding out how fast.

There’s an undeniable appeal there, and that appeal may help the sport in general as more people tune in to see how high Rousey’s speedometer will go. Maybe her success will convince other women to take up MMA, and maybe one of them will even prove to be better at it than she is. Maybe, with a little better scheduling on the part of Strikeforce and Showtime, fans will start tuning in to see Rousey fight and accidentally catch other great female bouts, such as the thrilling battle between Miesha Tate and Julie Kedzie that was somehow relegated to Saturday night’s prelims. Maybe, in this way, the rising tide will lift all ships this time, rather than propelling one all the way out of the harbor, never to be seen again.

What women’s MMA has right now is one phenomenal talent. What it needs is a division. Rousey, as dominant and exciting as she is, can’t do it all on her own. She also can’t do it forever. Let’s hope that by the time her career in the cage gives way to whatever’s next, she’ll have left the sport in better condition than she found it. In other words, let’s hope she can do the exact opposite for women’s MMA of what she has done for the arms and elbow joints of her opponents. Let’s also hope she takes her time for a change.

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